Political and Economic Views
Wales is a self-avowed Objectivist, referring to the philosophy invented by writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century emphasizing reason, individualism, and capitalism. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead while an undergraduate, and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think", he has said "I think I do a better job—than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists—of not pushing my point of view on other people." When asked by Brian Lamb about Rand’s influence on him in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles. An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason. In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".
In a 2011 interview with The Independent, he expressed sympathy with the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London protesters, saying, "You don't have to be a socialist to say it's not right to take money from everybody and give it to a few rich people. That's not free enterprise."
The January/February 2006 issue of Maximum PC reported that Wales had refused to comply with a request from the People's Republic of China to censor "politically sensitive" articles in Wikipedia. Other big business Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales let it be known that he would rather see companies such as Google follow suit on Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information. In 2010, he criticized whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its editor in chief Julian Assange, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents "could be enough to get someone killed," and he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki": "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing...".
Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek's essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate, as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project". Hayek argued that information is decentralized – that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority. Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement (which advocated that software be free and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, which "opened eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration." From his background in finance and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "hat participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".
Wales petitioned the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom against the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer to the USA. After an agreement was reached to avoid the extradition, Wales commented, "This is very exciting news, and I'm pleased to hear it... What needs to happen next is a serious reconsideration of the UK extradition treaty that would allow this sort of nonsense in the first place."
Read more about this topic: Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales
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